Efficiently Learning a Role

[2022 edition - where notated]

Originally published Summer 2015

This article is aimed at students learning to prepare roles as well as professionals who find themselves too busy but must learn a role in an allotted time. Through 20+ years of opera study, including seven seasons of full-time fest work in Germany, I have engineered a streamlined method of learning roles. Techniques have been borrowed from mentors and colleagues and are noted when specific ideas are mentioned.

[This is also a useful tool if you feel burnt out from cancellations or have had a long break during the last two years. Hopefully, this will give you what you need to return your mental focus in addition to renovating your technique and practice habits. When I have low energy but need to get something done, I come back and read this to make sure I’m doing everything I can to prepare. I have experienced a variety of cancellations during these last two years including advance cancellations, rehearsing through the final dress rehearsal with no opening, switching to film versions, and taped stage versions. I have even had un-cancellations last minute, so your best bet is to be prepared as if it is always happening.]

Get the score

Ask the company what score/edition they will be using. When performing certain operas with multiple versions like Tannhäuser or Boris Godunov, you can’t be sure which edition will be used without asking. It is important to know if a school or company is using a critical edition. It is also important to know if there will be custom dialogue in the case of Operetta. For school productions, check to make sure you are doing it in the original language. As a general rule: if there is a Bärenreiter, this will usually be the choice for professional companies. You are best off with a burgundy Ricordi hardback for Verdi and Puccini. These are usually cheap and often have just Italian, leaving room for score prep notations. Although the Schott scores for Wagner have nice new plates, they have not been generally adopted by opera houses who usually opt for Peter's editions. Still, ask the company which score/edition they will be using, as I have done productions using the Schott score for Wagner and some rental material specialty score for Verdi.

Prepare the score

Especially for role debuts, it’s important to immediately get a scope of the amount of work involved, even if you know you don’t have the time to learn it at that moment. Highlight the role using a bright neon highlighter. In the US, I suggest sharpie liquid pens. They have the brightest ink and last for years with their original intensity. In Europe, the best I have found is Stabilo neon. Read through the part while you highlight it. Don’t simply draw a line across the page. Observe breath markings of a quarter note or longer so that your brain has an extra notation of phrasing. If it is a language you are not as familiar with, just get the highlighting done and you will prepare the language shortly.

I suggest tabbing each entrance. You can add more later if the section you are preparing seems too big to manage. The bold five color plastic tabs work the best, as you can separate sections by contents and see without opening the book, where your arias and finales are. My initial system came with Mozart preparation because they are number operas and can be easily broken into sections.

Key for Mozart tabs

YELLOW: Aria

PINK: Duet

ORANGE: Small ensemble

GREEN: Finale

BLUE: Recit

Role learning in progress

When these are poking out of the top of your 500-page score, it's easy to turn to your aria from a closed book.

I am going to skip language prep for this article, but in this step, you would write notes to yourself of things you commonly must be reminded to do in that language. For example, I like to note double consonants and rolled Rs when preparing Italian scores even before bringing the role to a coach. If you don’t know the language well, this would be a good time to write the IPA. Translating is a concurrent step in this process. If you don’t know what you are singing, how can you possibly create theater?

TLM (Translated, Learned, Memorized)

The system that has most often saved me when running out of time before a production starts is TLM. On these tabs, you will use TLM as your to-do list. Once you have translated a section, you will mark that section with a T. This means if you have three Operas you are currently preparing (which I currently do), it's easy to see what work you have done on which piece without keeping that info in your head.

L would mean that this section is learned. You could sing it on-book at tempo confidently with good diction. In the fest system, when the week or two before staging comes, your entire role must be at least to the TL stage in prep for musical rehearsals. If you are running out of time and some sections are memorized but some aren’t learned, focus on getting all the sections tagged with an L. If you are a guest, it is almost always in your contract that your role must be 100% prepared before you get there. You can be dismissed for breach of contract if you are not prepared.

M would mean that your role is memorized and ready to stage. Having completed the proper prep work, you should be well on your way to having your role memorized. Some roles automatically memorize themselves. In the case of Monterone, the role is no more than 10 pages, so the time involved in memorizing is hopefully minimal. In the case of a World Premiere or a tone row opera, the amount of time learning the piece is so great that it may stick with you without separate memorization time. When I am talking about memorization, that primarily applies to the words, because if you can’t remember the tones or rhythms, it’s not really learned.

A good coach

Whether you are in school or fest at an opera house, you should theoretically have “free” coaching available to you. If a school or opera house does not give you enough coaching, it is still only you on stage. No matter what stage of your career, I suggest finding three coaches in your area that can work with you privately. Multiple coaches are nice because each will have their strengths to help you. I have certain coaches that are better for certain rep and ones that I trust for vocal technique. A young coach may be more willing to work on holidays and Sundays and are often a little bit cheaper than established coaches. Established coaches often have played more productions of the piece you are working on if it's from the standard repertoire.

The rule of 25s

David Holloway told all of the Santa Fe apprentices how to learn and memorize a role on the first day of the summer internship program. I am guessing most of us were prepared and memorized already, but he still had good tips to give. He has been a great mentor and this talk has stuck more than any other trick in preparing a role. While muscle memory is achieved with 3,000-5,000 repetitions, meaningful learning begins at 75 repetitions. After a role has been translated, the “L” learning should include the three sections of Text, Rhythm, and Music 25 times each. Use your tabs or smaller breakdowns for your repetitions. Going through cover to cover will be exhausting and you won’t set up your muscle memory. Break your arias and ensembles into verses or smaller parts.

Say the text 25 times

Slowly talk through the text, noting your difficulties with pronunciation. Pay attention to words not common to your normal singing vocabulary. The more roles you learn, the fewer words you have to translate. The more repetitions you do, the more your brain and muscles will come up with the next sequence of words automatically. This is a good time to note consonants to sing through, elisions, and accents of each word. This is a good time to make sure your Italian patter is words and not spitting consonants, or to make sure your German consonants do not disappear. Mark where a phrase should begin and end, purely based on the text. 25 times is quite a few if you are diligently reading aloud. Use tick marks in your score to note how many reps you have done, because, during these repetitions, your brain will need to concentrate purely on the text. For this step, I often will use just the text (making sure to speak all the repeats during this step). In this step, especially for Italian, looking at just the text will make sure your brain is still registering words elided when you start singing.

Speak the text 25 times in rhythm

After simply speaking the words at your own pace 25 times, you should be at ease with the text. You will now speak the text in rhythm. If you are doing a new piece that is very rhythmically difficult, you can first clap the rhythm without the words, but don’t count that towards your 25 times. Once 25 repetitions of text in rhythm are completed, the melody should be very simple to place on top of all your work.

Sing it with music 25 times

You should begin singing it “on-book”, but you will find after about 10 times you probably will have no impulse to look at the score anymore. For most roles, 25 times with music, including the other prep, should prepare you for staging. Doing this work always makes me extremely confident at the beginning of a six-week rehearsal period. If your rehearsal is less than six weeks and/or you are freelance, you are putting your contract in danger by not arriving ready for the performance on the first day of rehearsal.

There are many other tricks to preparing a role, but I wanted to give a starting point for those who don’t know where to start or are simply looking for a systematic way to get started when overwhelmed with another project.

Please send suggestions or requests for future score prep articles to lucialucas.de@gmail.com.